Near Gang Turf, Theater Features Peace

By ROBERT REINHOLD,

Published: July 15, 1991

LOS ANGELES, July 14—
The homeboys came, but they mostly left their colors at home and "dressed down," as they say in the 'hood, to see "Boyz N the Hood."

While sporadic violence on Friday night caused eight movie theaters elsewhere in Southern California and the nation to cancel showings of the film, there was no trouble where many had expected it to be the worst, at the Baldwin Hills Theater, which lies at the edge of the gang-torn South Central Los Angeles neighborhood where John Singleton's drama of growing up in the ghetto was set.

All weekend, long orderly lines of young black people waited to get into the theater, then quietly absorbed its message of the value of family, school and hope.

That there were no shootings or fights was testimony to two things: the hidden strengths of a community that is perceived mostly through news reports of gang violence, and the stern, fatherly management of Lance E. Drummond, a Harlem-born businessman who is chairman of the company that owns the theater. A Speech to the Audience

As at many theaters, extra security guards were hired to insure against misbehavior. Before the Saturday night showing, the 60-year-old Mr. Drummond mounted the stage of the 420-seat house, apologized for the tight security and told the audience: "Many people thought we should not show this movie. But I saw it and I felt the community needs to see it. It shows the good and bad. It also shows what is necessary. Look at this movie. I think you'll get something out of it."

The audience watched the film in rapt silence. Afterwards, many pronounced it the most realistic and positive portrait they had ever seen of South Central Los Angeles, which has been battling the ravages of gang terrorism, crack cocaine addiction, alcoholism and broken families. "It's a very positive movie," said Mashia McGraw, a receptionist. "It sends a message out to all black people. Everybody should come and watch it."

The film, written and directed by the 23-year-old Mr. Singleton, tells the story of a young man's passage to manhood in this tough setting. It preaches against gang violence, cocaine use and teen-age pregnancy, and stresses the importance of having a strong father and getting an education. Though it has bloody scenes of gang shootings, it is not a film about gangs.

Clashes among actual gang members left at least 33 people wounded and one dead when the film opened Friday at 829 screens around the nation. The film was expected to gross about $9.2 million for the weekend, said Columbia Pictures, the film's distributor.

Mr. Singleton complained Saturday in an interview with the Cable News Network that the news media were "lying in wait" for violence.

If they were lying in wait at Baldwin Hills, they were disappointed. The three-screen complex lies about 10 miles south of downtown Los Angeles, in a largely middle-class black neighborhood in which Mr. Singleton lives. It is about two miles from the heart of the toughest gang-dominated areas. After the film ended Saturday night, a band of Bloods in red caps and loose-fitting jeans strolled past the theater in their characteristic slouching walk, under the watchful eyes of the police. 'Sensitive to Our Patrons'

The theater complex is owned by the Economic Resources Corporation, a not-for-profit company based in Lynwood, Calif., that invests in minority ventures. It calls Baldwin Hills the only black-owned first-run theater in the United States. The theater, immaculate, employs local teen-agers, who sell popcorn while neatly dressed in white shirts and bow ties. Outside, celebrities like Louis Gossett Jr., Billy Dee Williams and Marvin Gaye have put their hand prints in the cement sidewalk, just as movie stars have at the historic Mann's Chinese Theater in Hollywood.

The reason that violence occurred at white-run theaters and not at Baldwin Hills, said its general manager, Nelson Bennett, was that the theater knew and respected the community while other theaters tended to treat young blacks with fear and contempt. "We are just trying to be sensitive to our patrons," he said. "If you come from the perception of extreme, this translates into the audience's being set up for trouble."

Mr. Drummond said: "We are not going to allow what happens in other parts of the city. We are not turning this theater over to anyone. We live in this community. We hire the local kids. Maybe the gangs respect this. They walk in here and take off their hats. This is neutral territory."

Nevertheless, a certain amount of tension surrounded the Saturday night screening. Security men scrutinized the line to keep apart members of Crips and Bloods gangs. Few of them flaunted the blue of the Crips or the red of the Bloods, but they were there. One man wearing a fire-red turban that identified him as a Blood was asked to remove it at the door. "You behave yourself, now," Mr. Drummond admonished the man, who did.

Afterwards, Dana Bell, an 18-year-old high school senior who said she lived amid the nightly killing seen in the film, said the film gave a true expression to the way many people in her community felt. She was also pleased, she said, that it was directed by a black man who grew up nearby.

To Harmon Spruill, a young black man who recently graduated from California State University at Los Angeles and who supervises youth programs in a local park nearby, the film's virtue was that it "showed attitudes of many people who continue to live in South Central" and portrayed them, for all their troubles and failings, as feeling, intelligent human beings. "This was not entertainment," he said. "This was reality."

Photo: "Many people thought we should not show this movie," said Lance E. Drummond, a Harlem-born businessman and owner of the Baldwin Hills Theater, which lies at the edge of the gang-torn Los Angeles neighborhood where the film "Boyz N the Hood" was set. "But I saw it and I felt the community needs to see it." (George Brich for The New York Times)